March 2008

Racists and Racism

rmiles7721March 14, 2008Site News

I received a comment on one of my posts recently and it really pissed me off. Although I commented back it irked me enough to want to post it.

“Eve Carson’s Family Owned Slaves Eve Carson’s family may have owned slaves in Athens, Georgia. Plus, word on the streets is Eve was buying drugs and playing Privileged White Flaunt – where privileged whites drive through underprivileged black neighborhoods at dangerous hours to tease poor blacks with their possessions.”

Of all the lame-brained fucking ideas, this retard puts the “N” in the N word.

Here’s the deal and although I am repeating my reply to this retarded sack of dog turds I have had time for it to sink in and let me think about it for awhile.

According to the article that the commenter linked to in his comment and which I am not, if Eve Carson’s family owned slaves and had not paid reparations, they shouldn’t feel sorry for her because she was murdered. In other words, it’s OK to kill white people that haven’t made reparations for the stupid things their ancestor’s did that they personally have no control over.

Personally I think it’s disgraceful that as a nation of freedom loving people we owned slaves. Thomas Jefferson wrote long and passionately about slavery, yet owned slaves. Thats inexusable. Does that mean that anyone with the name of Jefferson needs to be shot in the head because they haven’t made reparations.

Oh, wait. Probably 50% of the U.S. population with the surname Jefferson is black.

Now there’s a fucking quandary…

The other argument that this dickwad presented was that Eve Carson was hanging out in front of black people “flaunting her goods”.

So what?

I have a couple of waitresses that flaunt their “goods” all the time. That doesn’t mean I can bend them over the counter and fuck them up the ass any old time I want.

“Your honor, they were flaunting their goods”.

The troll came back and posted this reply to my response:

You’d like racism to be hidden from the minds of young blacks?

You must be a damned liberal. Just like a liberal to twist my words. Hell, the Republicans aren’t much different either I guess, but at least they are the party that stopped slavery, unlike the Democrats who would still love to see people in chains.

I went and read over at digitalmonkeys, the site that the commenter is from and I must say that my first reaction about the person is only partly right. They are definitely racist to the nth degree but fucking sick to boot. Let’s see, here are some of their observations from the site:

  • Arnold Schwarzhenegger is the new Hitler and a super racist.
  • Eve Carson was flaunting her possessions and deserved to be killed, as did Jennifer Ross, who died in 2005.
  • Hillary is a racist (probably true) and has been using racist body language.
  • God is getting rid of the Ozone layer, it’s not being removed through emissions, and the reason he is doing it is to drive white people crazy.
  • The ‘in’ thing for white women is that they now want to be raped, robbed and killed by black men.
  • 12-year-old Emily Haddock was asking for it too apparently. (if you click the link there is some really irritating music but just deal with it, it’s an online memorial for fucks sake.

It’s pretty damned weird over at digitalmonkets. Sort of a cross between Brer Rabbit and the National Enquirer. After having read for a couple of hours I am starting to think maybe it’s just some kind of sick joke.

Global Warming a Hoax

rmiles7721March 13, 20085Site News

Well, duh…
Newsmax Correspondent Philip Brennan describes why he agrees with the founder of the Weather Channel that global warming is the greatest scam in history. He also says that the fact that John McCain is on board with the environmentalists scares the hell out of him.



What makes Philip Brennan and the founder of the weather channel experts on global warming? Not a fucking thing. About the same thing that makes me an expert and I happen to agree with them.
The problem is that I tend to base my beliefs (as do the aforementioned guys) on real data and proven theories while the global warming pundits are just taking the word of these so-called scientists that are taking the word of other scientists using faulty data or data that only goes back a short period of time.
They are all a bunch of morons anyway.
I do agree with Brennan about McCain as well. Not that I don’t think that conservation and going to other forms of power is a bad thing, but I think that blaming the changing course of normal weather patterns on us is an idiotic blame game that’s just going to lead to more trouble later on down the road.

Sleep…sleep…sleep…

rmiles7721March 13, 2008Parenting/Family

Something I just am not getting enough of.

I have probably posted more today than I have the entire week. It’s funny how that ends up working out. I had actually planned on coming home yesterday and spending the majority of the day on the computer but I was at work until about midnight Tuesday and then my half day yesterday turned into me not getting home until 2pm. I was pretty whipped so I worked outside in the yard, knowing that if I came inside I would fall asleep.

Today I have pretty much taken it easy. I managed to get about nine hours of sleep last night, which was much needed but it sure doesn’t feel like it fixed my sleep deficit. Maybe in a couple of weeks I can take more than one day off. One can hope…

Pete has a concert tonight for the chorus. I am checking her out of school early this afternoon because they have to be there by three p.m. in order to start practicing. Why they don’t just stick the kids on a bus is beyond me. Anyway, we don’t have to be there until 6 or 6:30 so I will come home and throw something in the oven that we can eat before we go see them. If it’s charged up I may take our video camera as well.

On another note, I hate telemarketers. I generally don’t answer the phone on my day off but I got a call this morning and I answered it before I realized I don’t know the number. It was some telemarketer trying to sell me a small business phone system. While I might be interested, that’s something I will go out and look for. I certainly wouldn’t buy it sight unseen over the phone. Jerks. I can do my own research without you having to call me and wake me up.

Retirement

rmiles7721March 13, 2008Site News

So the maintenance man and I were talking a couple of days ago at work just about stupid stuff. He and I have been around for several years and I know him pretty well. He’s a good guy and will be retiring soon. I hate it because it means that we will end up with someone that just doesn’t know nearly enough about that stuff. They unfortunately don’t pay enough to get a top-notch maintenance man. With our guy’s case he makes a bit more because he’s been with us so long, and he has a nice bit of change tucked aside in stocks so that he can retire.
Anyway, he was trying to decide what to do with the van. He has to replace some of his storage cabinets and was looking at Jobox storage drawers for it. I don’t really know what the difference is between those and other’s so I just stand and nod and agree with him every once in a while. That’s when I found out he was retiring. I hate to see him go but he’s worked pretty darned hard and wants to spend some time with his grandchildren.
I still have a bit of time (like a couple of decades) before I retire but I darn sure and starting to look forward to it.

Wednesday Hero

rmiles7721March 12, 2008Site News

Sgt. Steve Morin Jr.

Sgt. Steve Morin Jr.
34 years old from Arlington, Texas
111th Engineer Battalion, 36th Infantry Division, Texas Army National Guard
September 28, 2005

From the time he finished high school, Sgt. Steve Morin Jr. made serving in the military his career.

“He always stood up for what he thought was right,” Gwendolyn Michelle Morin, his wife, said. “He was a fighter. He would never give up.”  “He had called me to let me know what he was going to do that day,” she said. He expected to be able to call her more often because of the missions he was being assigned. Sometimes they would go 11 or 12 days between calls.

Morin enlisted in the Navy after graduating high school in his hometown of Brownfield, Texas at 17. By 34, Morin had devoted 14 years to the Navy, served in the National Guard for two and planned to attend Officers Candidate School.  Morin was still in the Navy when he met his wife. At the time, the two were working for a photo company; he was Santa Claus and she was an elf, she said. Both were attending Texas Tech University.  “It was funny because we always kept running into each other. He would hang outside my classes and wait for me with a Diet Coke,” recalled Gwendolyn.  “He knew how to make me really happy.”

Sgt. Morin died when an IED went off, overturning the vehicle he was riding in near Umm Qasr, Iraq.

“He’s very strong willed, very determined. Humorous, a clown, but he was also very disciplined and very passionate about what he believed in,” Gwendolyn Morin said. “He always wanted to serve his country.”

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday.  For that, I am proud to call them Hero.

We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll.  For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

Superclubs Resorts

rmiles7721March 11, 20082Travel

About a week after we got back from the Bahamas I was emailed a link from the hotel booking site I had used and asked to fill out a survey as well as leave a comment for other folks that might be going through it. We had such a great time I was more than happy to do so. Superclubs all inclusive resorts actually has several of them spread out through the Caribbean including Breezes in Nassau which is where we stayed as well as all inclusive jamaica resorts. I’ve seen pictures from the places in Jamaica and it really looks like a cool place to visit. Prior to booking the vacation in Disney for June I had toyed with the idea of flying to Jamaica and staying there but we decided on something a little more friendly for our five year old.

That’s the view of Breezes Bahamas from the beach at around 7 a.m on Sunday morning before we left to come back home.

The Superclubs all inclusive resorts are just that, all inclusive. That means your hotel room, all food, drinks (including alcohol), gratuities, transportation to and from the airport, sports activities, snorkeling and all kinds of other stuff is included in your booking price. Pretty sweet deal actually. If not for shopping in some of the duty free stores in Nassau I wouldn’t have spent a dime there. I do have one recommendation though and that’s that anyone that wants to do some site seeing either rent a car or scooter. The low-cost transportation we used was cool but it’s always nice to be able to just pick up and go.

There are actually nine all inclusive jamaica resorts that Superclubs runs, ranging from the family friendly to more exclusive adults only resorts.

That’s a shot of the fountain at the end of one of the pools, which is just off the beach as well. Behind where I was standing is the main restaurant, which is mostly buffet style but was still pretty darn good. Eat and drink and sleep by the beach, what else could you ask for 🙂

Space Shuttle Endeavour Launches

rmiles7721March 11, 2008Site News

I thought that this was a pretty cool picture, which is what prompted me to post it here. I normally on post NASA stuff on one of my other sites, but am cross-posting it both places today.

The Space Shuttle Endeavor created a glow in the night as it launched at 2:29 a.m. from Launch Complex 39a at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida this morning. Endeavor and her crew are delivering a Canadian Space Agency robotic system an a logistics module for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to the International Space Station. This is to be a sixteen day mission.

According to the story (below) they are also swapping out an astronaut for a long-term mission and one of the EU astronauts is returning home.



This is also being Cross-Posted at theapp.net

Just Stopping By…

rmiles7721March 10, 2008Site News

Holy Cow!

I almost went two days without posting. That is very unlike me. I don’t remember the last time I went two entire days without posting, even while on vacation.

Work has been pretty rough (when is it not?). I have been without a manager at one of my stores for almost three weeks now and it appears that they are going to leave me without one until mine comes back to work and that might be months from now if ever. It’s worse when my two remaining managers have the day off since I have to run both of the stores. I may get the use of a couple of manager trainees here and there but that’s not written in stone yet.

My patience with some of these people is starting to wear thing thin though, I know that. I got back from vacation 19 days ago and I have had two days off since then. I might get lucky and get a day off this week as well as possibly a half day, but I won’t know until it happens. That’s of course if I don’t kill someone between now and then.

I haven’t even taken the time to check comments or trackbacks it’s been so busy and other than a couple of posts here or there that will be coming up, this is the first time I’ve sat down at my computer in a couple of days.

Normally as soon as I arrive home in the afternoon I will sit down and blog for awhile but today it was so nice outside that that’s where I stayed for a couple of hours. I planted some broccoli in an old sandbox, one of those plastic ones that is shaped liked something, in this case a green turtle. I poked holes in the bottom for drainage and then dumped in some potting soil. As long as I can keep those nasty old green worms off of the stuff I’ll be OK. Is Sevin dust OK to put on Broccoli? I also cleared some downed limbs and pulled them up to a pile at the very back of the yard, put down a little bit of gravel in a walkway, hung some new garden lights and tried to decide where to plant some more stuff.

I have quite a bit of stuff to go into the ground this year. Elephant Ears, Cannas, Lillies, Gladiolas, Caladiums, Tomatoes, peas, strawberries, and tons of flower seeds that I am most likely going to just scatter on the hill and hope like hell they grow. I also have some shit to put down that will hopefully scare off the ants. I need to break out the spreader and go to town with that. I was sort of hoping to rent a tiller this year and put new grass down in the back but since I’m pinching pennies for the trip to Disney, that may be out until later on.

Can You Hear Me Now?

rmiles7721March 8, 2008Technology

Fall Back. Spring Forward.

Or maybe it’s spring back and fall forward.

Doh!

I get it. Spring forward and Fall back.

I’m sure I must be brain dead or something. I’m riding home from drawer change tonight and it struck me. Spring Forward. Fall back. As in the seasons. I’m sure I already knew that but for some reason the play on words hit me as if I had just learned something. Working where I work must be steadily retarding my brain or something. Just give me another decade and I’ll be a gibbering drooling fool.

Oh wait, I already am.

Can it get any worse?

So here it is about 10:30. Or 8:30. Shit, it’s 11:30 and I have to get up at 5 am. So does that mean I’m getting up at 6 or 4? Can’t I just call in and forget this shit.

Why can’t the government just let Mr. Sun and Mr Earth’s rotation take care of time. They seem to have done a pretty fucking good job of it prior to our meddling. Now you have 482 different time zones (unless you are smart and live in Arizona) and they change twice a year. What the fuck?

So I need to be in bed. It’s midnight now and I am not going to be worth a crap in the morning.

The girls are in South Carolina tonight. I suppose I’ll sleep on the couch as I usually do. If I happen to be off I will sleep in the bed but I am so afraid that I will oversleep when the wife isn’t here that I crash in the living room.

On an entirely different note (pun not intended but well used) I love music. I hate earphones though, thus the reason I don’t have an iPod. The earbuds are fucking irritating and headphones are almost as bad. That’s one of the reasons I gave the Marine my Jabra Bluetooth earpiece. I tried it for a couple of weeks two different times and I just hate it. I love the quality of the music with headphones but I always feel like I’m missing something with them on. I also can’t do like the wife does and only keep one in her ear while she’s pretending to pay attention with the other one (the deaf one). I am not easily fooled.

Wait a minute. Actually I guess I am, but I digress.

When I bought the Blackberry last month (did I tell you I’m selling my Samsung i760 on eBay?) it came with a set of earbuds. These are kind of nice. They are heavy. Damn, they actually have metal in them and aren’t some cheap ass piece of crap plastic junk that I’m going to tear up in two days. I set them aside. Since there’s no one in the house but me and I don’t want to hear the yipping of the dog as I kick him through the house I figured I would try them out tonight. Very nice. I also like the media player that comes with the Blackberry as well. The only problem I have is that it won’t let me hide shit from it, so along with every fucking song on my SD card I also get 2 seconds dings and pings and assorted whoops in between songs. I don’t want that shit going off when I’m listening to music. Can’t they fix this shit?

Speaking of eBay, the auction on my phone should have been complete several days ago but they killed the first one. AND charged me $27 bucks for it. “KEYWORD SPAMMING” Here’s a keyword for you. Two, actually. FUCK YOU.

I had it listed as a Samsung i760, almost new. Hell, I have used eBay for about seven years now, but I am not on there very often and I don’t know anything about keyword spamming. It IS almost new you bunch of shitheads. They fucking waited until six days into the auction when it was up to at least the amount I really want for the phone, THEN they cancel the fucking thing. Bullshit. So I have about three bids right now and it’s only going for $250 right now. If’n you are looking for a Windows Mobile 6 phone, head your happy ass on over and bid. Just because I hate the fucking thing doesn’t mean that you will. I understand it’s supposed to be a pretty good phone but after three months of usage I hate it.

Now the Blackberry Pearl this thing’s the shit. It had better be for $450. It’s not the perfect phone by any means but it’s pretty cool. I think someone needs to ship me their iPhone and let me use it for a couple of months so that I can see if I like it or not. You go into the Verizon place (or wherever the fuck you shop) and they have these stickers on the screens and very few working models around so you can’t really tell how much of a pain in the ass it is going to be to use or if you are going to like it or not. And these geeks that write the call phone reviews are all fucking retards anyway. What the fuck do they know and how many times have they had to try and cover two different shifts with people that have called in in three different stores while they are driving somewhere anyway. With a cup of coffee in one hand and a smoke in the other. Now THAT’s the test of a goddamned phone! If I can call out and answer while playing with myself at 80mph that’s the phone I need and don’t give me any of that hands free bullshit. The same thing applies to hands free devices that does to earbuds and head phones and retards that look like they are talking to themselves in the car need to be run off the road anyway.

Well, now that it really is late I have to hit the sack.

 

Label Makers

rmiles7721March 8, 2008Site News

I keep a filing cabinet worth of stuff in my car for work. Although I do have a corner of the living room as my home office, since I am in my restaurants 10-12 hours a day my office extends to my car. I have simple stuff such as pen and paper, printer paper, extra uniforms, to other stuff such as steam tables (moved it to my basement last night), silverware, batteries and a DYMO label maker for name tags. I bought it about a year and a half ago, when I was opening the new store in Temple and I have been using it since then. Coomes in pretty handy too for labeling other stuff as well.

When I first started running restaurants about all you could get without buying a huge professional setup was those hand-held clicking label makers. I used one for quite a long time but as technology improves so does the equipment that I get to use as well.

DYMO also has some pretty cool stuff besides the hand-held label makers. They have label makers that you can hook up via a USB connection for your label printing as well as several other products.

The DYMO LabelWriter 400 Turbo is pretty cool. It prints out at an average speed of 55 labels each minute including the online stamps. That’s what I really like about it. I have been using Stamps.Com for a few years now, but I generally have to print and purchase an entire sheet of stamps at a time. The software from the USPS allows you to print them one (or more) at a time, but with a deskjet and stickers it’s a bit unwieldy and they will curl and sometimes get stuck inside the printer. That’s one of the reasons I like the LabelWriter 400 Turbo so much. It just makes printing stamps, or any other label for that matter, easy and simple. You don’t need to buy any ink or toner either!

With the DYMO stamps there’s no monthly fee like there is using the USPS service. As I mentioned before, it’s a thermal printer so the expense of ink cartridges is gone as well. If you print a lot of postage and other labels this will cover the cost of the printer in months. It also has add-ins for Outlook, Word and Quickbooks not to mention several other popular Mac and PC programs. Yep, it’ll work with your Mac as well.

If you are in the market for a decent printer for postage and other labels you just might want to check out the quality of DYMO’s products.